Vegetable oil Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed ...

can be used as an

alternative fuel Alternative fuels, also known as non-conventional and advanced fuels, are fuels derived from sources other than petroleum. Alternative fuels include gaseous fossil fuels like propane, natural gas, methane, and ammonia; biofuels like biodies ...

diesel engine The diesel engine, named after the German engineer Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which Combustion, ignition of diesel fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to Mechanics, mechanical Compr ...

s and in

heating oil Heating oil is any petroleum product or other oil used for heating; it is a fuel oil. Most commonly, it refers to low viscosity grades of fuel oil used for furnaces or boilers for home heating and in other buildings. Home heating oil is often ...

burners. When vegetable oil is used directly as a fuel, in either modified or unmodified equipment, it is referred to as straight vegetable oil (SVO) or pure plant oil (PPO). Conventional diesel engines can be modified to help ensure that the

viscosity Viscosity is a measure of a fluid's rate-dependent drag (physics), resistance to a change in shape or to movement of its neighboring portions relative to one another. For liquids, it corresponds to the informal concept of ''thickness''; for e ...

of the vegetable oil is low enough to allow proper

atomization Atomization refers to breaking bonds in some substance to obtain its constituent atoms in gas phase. By extension, it also means separating something into fine particles, for example: process of breaking bulk liquids into small droplets. Atomizati ...

of the fuel. This prevents incomplete combustion, which would damage the engine by causing a build-up of

carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

. Straight vegetable oil can also be blended with conventional diesel or processed into

biodiesel Biodiesel is a renewable biofuel, a form of diesel fuel, derived from biological sources like vegetable oils, animal fats, or recycled greases, and consisting of long-chain fatty acid esters. It is typically made from fats. The roots of bi ...

, HVO or bioliquids for use under a wider range of conditions.

History

Rudolf Diesel Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel (, ; 18 March 1858 – 29 September 1913) was a German inventor and mechanical engineer who invented the Diesel engine, which burns Diesel fuel; both are named after him. Early life and education Diesel was born on 1 ...

was the father of the engine which bears his name. His first attempts were to design an engine to run on coal dust, but he later designed his engine to run on vegetable oil. The idea, he hoped, would make his engines more attractive to farmers having a source of fuel readily available. In a 1912 presentation to the British Institute of Mechanical Engineers, he cited a number of efforts in this area and remarked, "The fact that fat oils from vegetable sources can be used may seem insignificant today, but such oils may perhaps become in course of time of the same importance as some natural mineral oils and the tar products are now." Periodic petroleum shortages spurred research into vegetable oil as a diesel substitute during the 1930s and 1940s, and again in the 1970s and early 1980s when straight vegetable oil enjoyed its highest level of scientific interest. The 1970s also saw the formation of the first commercial enterprise to allow consumers to run straight

vegetable oil Vegetable oils, or vegetable fats, are oils extracted from seeds or from other parts of edible plants. Like animal fats, vegetable fats are ''mixtures'' of triglycerides. Soybean oil, grape seed oil, and cocoa butter are examples of seed ...

in their automobiles, Elsbett of

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

. In the 1990s Bougainville conflict, islanders cut off from oil supplies due to a blockade fueled their vehicles with

coconut oil Coconut oil (or coconut fat) is an edible oil derived from the kernels, meat, and milk of the coconut palm fruit. Coconut oil is a white solid fat below around , and a clear thin liquid oil at higher temperatures. Unrefined varieties have a disti ...

Application and usability

Modified fuel systems

Most diesel car engines are suitable for the use of straight vegetable oil (SVO), also commonly called pure plant oil (PPO), with certain modifications. Principally, the

and

surface tension Surface tension is the tendency of liquid surfaces at rest to shrink into the minimum surface area possible. Surface tension (physics), tension is what allows objects with a higher density than water such as razor blades and insects (e.g. Ge ...

of the SVO/PPO must be reduced by preheating it, typically by using

waste heat Waste heat is heat that is produced by a machine, or other process that uses energy, as a byproduct of doing work. All such processes give off some waste heat as a fundamental result of the laws of thermodynamics. Waste heat has lower utility ...

from the engine or electricity; otherwise, poor atomization, incomplete combustion, and

carbonization Carbonization or carbonisation is the conversion of organic matters like plants and dead animal remains into carbon through destructive distillation. Complexity in carbonization Carbonization is a pyrolytic reaction, therefore, is considered a ...

may result. One common solution is to add a

heat exchanger A heat exchanger is a system used to transfer heat between a source and a working fluid. Heat exchangers are used in both cooling and heating processes. The fluids may be separated by a solid wall to prevent mixing or they may be in direct contac ...

and an additional fuel tank for the petrodiesel or biodiesel blend and to switch between this additional tank and the main tank of SVO/PPO. The engine is started on diesel, switched over to vegetable oil as soon as it is warmed up, and switched back to diesel shortly before being switched off to ensure that no vegetable oil remains in the engine or fuel lines when it is started from cold again. In colder climates it is often necessary to heat the vegetable oil fuel lines and tank as it can become very viscous and even solidify. Single-tank conversions were developed largely in Germany and are now used throughout Europe. These conversions are designed to provide reliable operation with rapeseed oil that meets the German rapeseed oil fuel standard DIN 51605. Modifications to the engine's cold start regime assist combustion on start up and during the engine warm up phase. Suitably modified indirect injection (IDI) engines have proven to be operable with 100% PPO down to temperatures of . Direct injection (DI) engines generally have to be preheated with a

block heater A block heater is used in cold climates to warm an engine prior to starting. They are mostly used for car engines; however, they have also been used in aircraft engines. The most common design of block heater is an electrical heating element embe ...

or diesel fired heater. The exception is the VW TDI ( Turbocharged Direct Injection) engine for which a number of German companies offer single-tank conversions. For long-term durability it has been found necessary to decrease the oil change interval and pay increased attention to engine maintenance.

Unmodified indirect injection engines

Many cars powered by indirect injection engines supplied by in-line injection pumps, or mechanical Bosch injection pumps are capable of running on pure SVO/PPO in all but winter temperatures. The most popular of these are the OM616 and OM617 engines found in the Mercedes-Benz W123 and W124 vehicles manufactured from 1980 through 1985. Indirect injection

Mercedes-Benz Mercedes-Benz (), commonly referred to simply as Mercedes and occasionally as Benz, is a German automotive brand that was founded in 1926. Mercedes-Benz AG (a subsidiary of the Mercedes-Benz Group, established in 2019) is based in Stuttgart, ...

vehicles with in-line injection pumps and cars featuring the PSA XUD engine tend to perform reasonably, especially as the latter is normally equipped with a coolant heated

fuel filter A fuel filter is a filter used to screen out foreign particles or liquids from the fuel. Most internal combustion engine An internal combustion engine (ICE or IC engine) is a heat engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an o ...

. Engine reliability would depend on the condition of the engine. Attention to maintenance of the engine, particularly of the fuel injectors, cooling system and glow plugs will help to provide longevity. Ideally the engine would be converted.

Vegetable oil blending

The relatively high kinematic viscosity of vegetable oils must be reduced to make them compatible with conventional compression-ignition engines and fuel systems. Cosolvent blending is a low-cost and easy-to-adapt technology that reduces viscosity by diluting the vegetable oil with a low-molecular-weight

solvent A solvent (from the Latin language, Latin ''wikt:solvo#Latin, solvō'', "loosen, untie, solve") is a substance that dissolves a solute, resulting in a Solution (chemistry), solution. A solvent is usually a liquid but can also be a solid, a gas ...

. This blending, or "cutting", has been done with diesel fuel, kerosene, and gasoline, among others; however, opinions vary as to the efficacy of this. Noted problems include higher rates of wear and failure in fuel pumps and piston rings when using blends.Pacific Islands Applied Geoscience Commission: "Coconut Oil Fuel Research in the Republic of the Marshall Islands"
/ref>

Home heating

When liquid fuels made from biomass are used for energy purposes other than transport, they are called bioliquids or biofuels. With often minimal modification, most residential furnaces and boilers that are designed to burn No. 2 heating oil can be made to burn either biodiesel or filtered, preheated waste vegetable oil (WVO). New standard oil burners are certified to operate on 20% biodiesel (B-20). Higher blends are possible with care, since biodiesel tends to liberate existing tarry deposits in fuel tank, which may tend to clog one or more filters. Conventional oil burners tend to clog and char if more than a smaller fraction of vegetable oil is mixed with conventional oil fuel. If the vegetable oil is cleaned at home by the consumer, WVO can result in considerable savings. Many restaurants will receive a minimal amount for their used cooking oil, and processing to a biofuel is fairly simple and inexpensive. Making the oil into biodiesel involves some toxic and hazardous chemical transformations. Burning filtered WVO directly is somewhat more problematic, since it is more viscous and has a higher ignition temperature; nonetheless, its burning can be accomplished with suitable preheating or burners designed to operate on it. WVO can thus be an economical heating option for those with the necessary mechanical and experimental aptitude.

Combined heat and power

A number of companies offer compression ignition engine generators optimized to run on plant oils where the waste engine heat is recovered for heating.

Properties

The main form of SVO/PPO used in the UK is

rapeseed Rapeseed (''Brassica napus'' subsp. ''napus''), also known as rape and oilseed rape and canola, is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed, which naturall ...

oil (also known as canola oil, primarily in the United States and Canada) which has a freezing point of . However the use of sunflower oil, which gels at around , is currently being investigated as a means of improving cold-weather starting. However, oils with lower gelling points tend to be less saturated (leading to a higher iodine number) and

polymerize In polymer chemistry, polymerization (American English), or polymerisation (British English), is a process of reacting monomer molecules together in a chemical reaction to form polymer chains or three-dimensional networks. There are many form ...

more easily in the presence of atmospheric oxygen.

Material compatibility

Polymerization also has been consequentially linked to catastrophic component failures such as injection pump shaft seizure and breakage, injector tip failure leading to various and/or combustion chamber components damaged. Most metallurgical problems such as corrosion and electrolysis are related to water-based contamination or poor choices of plumbing (such as copper or zinc) which can cause gelling – even with petroleum-based fuels.

Temperature effects

Some Pacific island nations are using

as fuel to reduce their expenses and their dependence on imported fuels while helping stabilize the coconut oil market. Coconut oil is only usable where temperatures do not drop below , unless two-tank SVO/PPO kits or other tank-heating accessories, etc. are used. The same techniques developed to use, for example, canola and other oils in cold climates can be implemented to make coconut oil usable in temperatures lower than

Availability

Recycled vegetable oil

Recycled vegetable oil, also termed used vegetable oil (UVO), waste vegetable oil (WVO), used cooking oil (UCO), or yellow grease, is recovered from businesses and industry that use the oil for cooking. , the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

was producing in excess of 11 billion liters (2.9 billion U.S. gallons) of recycled vegetable oil annually, mainly from industrial deep fryers in

potato The potato () is a starchy tuberous vegetable native to the Americas that is consumed as a staple food in many parts of the world. Potatoes are underground stem tubers of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'', a perennial in the nightshade famil ...

processing plants,

snack food A snack is a small portion of Human food, food generally Eating, eaten between meals. Snacks come in a variety of forms including Food packaging, packaged snack foods and other processed foods, as well as items made from fresh ingredients at ho ...

factories, and

fast food restaurant A fast-food restaurant, also known as a quick-service restaurant (QSR) within the industry, is a specific type of restaurant that serves fast food, fast-food cuisine and has minimal Foodservice#Table service, table service. The food served ...

s. If all those 11 billion liters could be recycled and used to replace the energy equivalent amount of petroleum (an ideal case), almost 1% of US oil consumption could be offset.See Greenhouse gas emissions by the United States Utilizing recycled vegetable oil as a replacement for standard petroleum-derived fuels like gasoline would reduce the price of gasoline by preserving the supply of petroleum.

Virgin vegetable oil

Virgin vegetable oil, also termed pure plant oil or straight vegetable oil, is extracted from plants solely for use as fuel. In contrast to used vegetable oil, is not a byproduct of other industries, and thus its prospects for use as fuel are not limited by the capacities of other industries. Production of vegetable oils for use as fuels is theoretically limited only by the agricultural capacity of a given economy. However, doing so detracts from the supply of other uses of pure vegetable oil.

Legal implications

Taxation of fuel

Taxation on SVO/PPO as a road fuel varies from country to country. It is possible that the revenue departments in many countries are even unaware of its use or consider it too insignificant to legislate. Germany used to have 0% taxation, resulting in it being a leader in most developments of the fuel use.

References

{{Palm oil Biofuels DIY culture Food waste

fuel A fuel is any material that can be made to react with other substances so that it releases energy as thermal energy or to be used for work (physics), work. The concept was originally applied solely to those materials capable of releasing chem ...